THIS DAZZLING LIGHT SHOW BRIEFLY ENLIVENED A SERIES OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LOCKS AND BASINS IN CENTRAL GLASGOW, AS PART OF THE CITY'S CELEBRATION OF ITS ARCHITECTURE AND INDUSTRIAL ARTEFACTS.

Constructed as part of the Forth and Clyde Canal, Glasgow's Maryhill Locks and Kelvin Aqueduct are monuments to an age of heroic civil engineering. Built across the narrow waist of Scotland, the 35 mile long canal linked Glasgow and Edinburgh, enabling relatively speedy passage between the two cities. The canal was laboriously hewn by hand 'through rocks, quicksands and mosses, carried up precipices and over valleys, rising and falling 160 feet by means of 39 locks, passing over 10 major aqueducts and a number of smaller ones', according to reports of the day. Its waters were plied by an immense variety of craft - barges, scows, track-boats, pleasure steamers, lighters and puffers, originally pulled by horses and later powered by steam. The cutting of Britain's waterways during the late eighteenth century was essential to the progress of the Industrial Revolution, but the canals also made possible a new world of waterborne recreation for the moneyed and mobile classes.

Located in the northern part of Glasgow, the Maryhill Locks descend westwards towards the Kelvin Valley. Each of the five locks is interspersed with a kidney-shaped basin; Lock 21 marks the highest point of the canal 156 feet above sea level. On the north side of the locks, lies the original Kelvin Dock, the site of the canal's oldest building and repair yard built in 1789. Defined by low-lying, negative impressions cut into a gradual slope, the locks are an enduring, almost geological presence. For nearly two centuries, industrial and pleasure craft bustled along their waters, but during the 1960s canal transportation became commercially obsolete and the waterways were abandoned and left to rot.

Following years of activism by industrial archaeologists and waterway enthusiasts, the entire Forth and Clyde Canal is now the subject of an energetic reconstruction programme under the auspices of British Waterways. When completed, the canal will once again provide a navigable water link between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Earlier this year, as part of Glasgow's 1999 City of Architecture and Design initiative, the Maryhill Locks were also the focus of a public art project. Coordinated by American lighting designer Leni Schwendinger, Water above Water temporarily transformed the locks and Kelvin Aqueduct into a magical, illuminated landscape. A sea of luminous blue, green and aquamarine floodlighting dissolved and animated the stern, hand-hewn stone of the aqueduct's buttresses and arches. Shown here are some of the specially designed canal craft, illuminated floating models made by local architects and designers. Bobbing and dancing around the basins, this sparkling armada brought light and life to the muscular relics of an industrial past.